Spanish police seize 40 pallets made out of 1.4 tonnes of compressed cocaine
that was made to look like wood

By Nicola Harley and Guy Hedgecoe in Madrid, video source NCA

11:53AM GMT 12 Dec 2015

Six Britons have been arrested after police found 1.5 tonnes of cocaine worth £240m disguised as wooden pallets at a Spanish port.

Spanish police seized 40 pallets made out of 1.5 tonnes of compressed cocaine that was made to look like wood that arrived on a shipping container from Colombia.

“We believe the charcoal company was a front for a industrial-sized lab where cocaine was extracted from pallets and charcoal, processed and repackaged for onward distribution across Europe."

Greg McKenna, National Crime Agency Regional Head of Investigations

Acting on intelligence from the National Crime Agency (NCA), officers from the Spanish National Police searched the shipping container which arrived in the Port of Valencia, Spain's second-busiest port, on 30 November.

The international operation has led to 11 arrests, the seizure of 1.5 tonnes of cocaine and the shut down of an industrial-sized drug production lab.

The container appeared to be loaded with sacks of charcoal on wooden pallets but forensic examination found that the pallets were made of compressed cocaine powder made to look like wood, and some of the sacks contained cocaine disguised as charcoal.

One of the pallets made of cocaine seized during a police operation in the port of Valencia, eastern Spain (Photo: EPA)

The authorities suspect the group used a charcoal company in Spain as a front to import the cocaine and hide a lab where the drug was extracted from pallets and charcoal, processed and repackaged for distribution across Europe.

It was then shipped to Valencia by boat, where the traffickers planned to distribute the drug around Europe.

The false pallets arrived along with 24 tonnes of charcoal, which the traffickers used in a bid to put sniffer dogs off the scent.

Forensic scientist Richard Hooker, of Allen Morgan Associates which provide expert evidence on drug cases, said the smuggles used glue and moulds to make the cocaine look like wooden pallets.

"To make the cocaine look like wooden pallets they have dissolved the white cocaine powder with a solvent or glue," he said.

"It has then been placed into moulds shaped like pallets to set.

"When the resin dries out it then solidifies. If you mix it with a dye it then gives the wood effect and gives the appearance of dark wood.

"Once the dealers get it they can then re-dissolve it and reverse the process to extract the cocaine.

"The same process can also be used to make it look like pieces of charcoal by using charcoal powder."

One of the pallets the haul was stored inside (Photo: EPA)

Coordinated strikes on December 1 led to six men from Liverpool being arrested in the UK and Dubai.

NCA officers arrested a 44-year-old at Liverpool Airport, along with a 54-year-old and a 50-year-old in the rooftop car park of the Belle Vale Shopping Centre.

Merseyside Police detained a 46-year-old at an address in Knowsley Village.

The Dubai Police Anti-Narcotic Unit arrested a 39-year-old and a 38-year-old at a luxury apartment.

Another five men – two Colombians, two Peruvians and a Spaniard – were detained on December 3 by the SNP at a company in an industrial unit in Chiva following the delivery of a dummy consignment of charcoal.

The police said the arrests included two Colombian experts in using chemicals to process cocaine into different formats.

The cocaine was processed in Colombia, where it was subsequently mixed with other chemicals to make it malleable enough to be moulded and dark enough to look like wood.

“Two of the Colombians arrested in Spain are expert ‘cooks’, deployed to our country in order to reverse the concealment process and thus access the cocaine,” the Spanish police reported.

Those men allegedly operated a secret laboratory located in an industrial estate in Chiva, near Valencia, where the Spain arrests took place.

“The ‘narcos’ used a front company dedicated to chemical products and which supposedly imported sacks of charcoal, which was packed between pallets, which were in fact the drug,” the police added.

Greg McKenna, NCA Regional Head of Investigations, said: “We believe the charcoal company was a front for a industrial-sized lab where cocaine was extracted from pallets and charcoal, processed and repackaged for onward distribution across Europe.

“This seizure of cocaine, the shutting down of the lab and the eleven arrests will have disrupted criminal activity across the whole of Europe.”

The four men arrested in Liverpool are on bail pending further enquiries, while the two men in Dubai are still remanded in custody. The five men in Spain are also in custody.

Police in October seized 300 kilos of cocaine from a container loaded with puréed bananas that arrived from Costa Rica at the port of Valencia.

Spain's close ties with its former colonies in Latin America have made it the main entry point used by drug smugglers to bring cocaine into Europe.

Smugglers have used increasingly ingenious methods to get the drug past Spanish customs. In recent years police have found cocaine inside breast implants, a wig, a plaster cast encasing a man's broken leg as well as inside a 42-piece crockery set.